Whoa Brad, I guess the next thing we'll be hearing from you is that you've found Christ and/or you're going into rehab. Aren't those the words, these days, that seem to follow such a declaration as you made in this post?

Yeah, I mean who hasn't peeked into men's stalls in bathrooms, and then propositioned the person inside? Oh, wait, yeah --- Practically no one. What an idiot. And then to say he pleaded guilty because of --- What? This guy has a problem. Glad to see you are out of your closet, Brad, as well as open about your secret marriage... Damn. I wish I was gay... and still married...

And fess up, how many of y'all in here have accidentally touched the foot of the man in the next stall when you were "getting comfortable"? I mean, the guy even went for the wheelchair accessible stall because his stance was so wide!!

And what's wrong with waving hello under the wall? He was just being friendly!

(And here I was thinking the people who use cell phones in the bathroom are being gross!)

Okay, I admit, my FIRST thought was, didn't their mamas teach them not to touch ANYTHING in a public bathroom??

Snark aside, isn't it sad to know there are still people with such self-loathing that they actually HELP BUILD the kind of society where they have to meet potential "dates" in a public restroom?

I have been friends with some very talented gay folk, after having been introduced to them by my ex-girlfriend in Hollywood.

Gayness is not the issue.

Senator Craig (R-Closet) is a hypocrit and a liar. He does a disservice to gays who do not want to corrupt themselves by living a lie. By feeding a frenzy of schizophrenic practices and proceedures.

Senator Craig has been outed by many for years, Joe Scarborough (ex-republican congressman), several of his gay partners, and a gay group who specializes in outing congress members like Craig.

The reason they out them is that those like Craig are leading a double life and perpetrating a fraud upon the public.

The "family values" crowd are sheepish for some reason, and can be gamed. Craig spends his senate time bashing gays with support for anti-gay legislation, as a coverup of his real persona.

He fosters and promotes discriminatory legislation that seeks to demonize gays in a religious fervor that poses as secular public business.

Perhaps the most harsh criticism comes from insiders of the republican party itself:

“The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness,” said Mr. Reed, sounding exasperated in an interview on Tuesday morning. “You can’t make this stuff up. And the impact this is having on the grass-roots around the country is devastating. Republicans think the governing class in Washington are a bunch of buffoons who have total disregard for the principles of the party, the law of the land and the future of the country.”

Okay, I'm not gay and don't play one on TV, but have several gay and bi friends, and have started to develop a roughly honed gaydar. I got Haggard long ago, but don't see it in Craig. I also don't see it in Tom the roofer, who's been with his partner Chris (easy pick) the artist for years.

Notice in every article about Craig, they have to bring up Clinton/Lewinsky (10 years ago). The NYTimes, AP, Yahoo, etc...every single one, for "balance & propaganda", brought up the 10 year old Clinton/Lewinsky thing. They have to go back 10 years to the SAME Clinton/Lewinsky thing, for EVERY NEW GOP REST ROOM SCANDAL!

How come they never bring up Gingrich? They have to push the talking point that BOTH parties are equally engaging in lewd sex scandals...it's just that the last dozen, all this year, are ALL REPUBLICAN...and they have to go back 10 years to Clinton for comparison with EACH AND EVERY NEW REPUBLICAN SEX SCANDAL!

The thing that makes the situation very dangerous where public officials and their secret lives are concerned is the blackmail angle - exactly to what lengths would people go to protect themselves? What pieces of legislation, what contracts can be extorted, what corruption can be overlooked, or what enemies can be pursued in the name of keeping reputation, family, and career intact?

I agree, sexual orientation is not the issue here. Personal lives are just that - personal.

But when a person's behavior is polar opposite to what they advocate, when they are caught doing something they shouldn't, then try to blame it on someone else, their personal lives become open season. Those who live in glass houses...

Last week, Harper’s magazine reported that party-goers “under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence committees — including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.” CIA Director Porter Goss is perhaps the only individual who fits such a description.

(Watergate, The Sequel). Even Big Dan #9, #10 missed Porter "Porker" Goss, Lyle "Dusty" Foggo, and agent Six Fingers, all high ups in the CIA after preznit blush appointed Porker to go over and do a heckuva job at CIA.

It reminds me of Dylan's lyric "There's so much oppression [corruption] ... can't keep track of it anymore".

The ramifications of damage to the intelligence community thru, as you pointed out, blackmail and coercion cannot be underestimated.

At Left Coaster there is an exchange about Craig and his "wide-stance". Wide-stance apparently means many things--baseball players, Pontiac drivers, and of course all the other "Wide-stance Republicans" who sort of imagine it to mean hands on hips and looking like John Wayne.

For me, that phrase used to conjure up the military style of standing and aiming a handgun. Maybe that still applies in Craig's case.

"Bible Thumping", "Born Again Christians" who proclaim to be beacons of "Morality" and "Family Values" while in the media spotlight. But when off camera they are giving one another a blow-job in the nearest men's room.
Then go back to the floor of the senate and vote against gay marriage and the military's - "Don't ask/Don't tell" policy as being too hedonistic - a bill that only a heathen/non God fearing Democrat would consider voting for and support.

it's too bad that the FL State Republican Bob Allen (who was also recently arrested in a public restroom) didn't get together with Republican U.S. Senator Larry Craig. Could've saved themselves and their families and friends a lot of grief. (being honest and straightforward about themselves would have helped, too, but that wasn't an option for them. Sad.)

These revelations of self-hating closeted Republicans demonstrates why they are so against gays in the military --- if the concern is that gays are at high risk of blackmail for their secrets, closeted Republicans must live in fear of it happening to them.

You can trace the source of all this insanity back to that 'book' that teaches people the HATE the "other"; that endorses the slaughtering of women and children (every last one); that advocates rape of your conquered war victims and out-of-wedlock birth is okay as long as you can cover your geneology back to a king. That book purportedly written by a tribal 'god' with a fetish for the male forskin, called Yahweh.

You can trace all this hate back to that book. Unless and until that book is exposed as the fraud that it is, this will not stop.

Look. There are a few ways to achieve either the ultimate orgasm or, indeed, enough juice to get an erection. One of them is ever deepening intimacy with your lover, and that, so very unfortunately, is exceedingly rare. Others include: being as naughty as you can; using certain drugs; and that choking trick that's left so many accidental suicides.

I knew an extremely happily married man, one of the first people I knew to die of AIDS, who admitted to me that he cruised for gay sex whenever he was in San Francisco on business because the naughtiness factor was so exciting that his dick would work overtime. He admitted also that it was a way to fantasize subjugating men he didn't like, a relief valve for his hostilities and feelings of inadequacy, beside the basic fact of making his dick work so well. He was never romantically interested in another man in all fifty-six years of his life, nor did he find men physically attractive. It was 100% about the naughtiness and ego relief.

So it isn't necessarily that these men's room cruisers are gay at all. Having homosexual encounters does not make one homosexual.

I know it serves our political gain to insist cruising the men's room is an expression of homosexuality, rather than plain lewdness, but we should try to keep our brains rooted in what's actual. If homosexual encounters made one homosexual, by some reports, that would mean well over half the men on earth are actually gay. Pull yourself together.

This is happening so often now that someone's got to coin a term, a specific word, for the act of a Republican Politician's Wife standing stolidly beside her shamed man while he waxes bullshithetical about how strong and true his marriage is, how gay he isn't, how much he hates hookers, whatever. Tammy Wynette summed it all up for us --- stand by that man, girls! go on, now, git! --- so maybe we should dedicate this new term to her, make a verb form of her name: Senator Craig stood next to his wife, who wynetted admirably throughout the entire ordeal.

When vitter and his wife made their comment to the media . The body language of him holding his wife's hand leading her ... either to the camera or away (I can't remember which) ... was that of someone pulling around a vacuum cleaner . . .

What would have happened if Craig had simply said "I am not a lesbian"?

It would have been more accurate.

For those interested, I note that gay used to refer to men, while lesbian referred to women. That is evidently changing:

In a narrow sense, gay refers to male homosexuality, but it often is used in its broadest sense, especially in media headlines and reports, to refer to homosexuality in general. Lesbian, however, always denotes a homosexual woman.

(Wiki). When is Rudy going to come out and say "I'm not gay, I am a crossdresser"?